Internal Locus of Control

If you’re a human being, you’ve likely experienced curve balls in life. 

Unless you haven’t, in which case you’re a really lucky nepo baby, or an expert at dissociating. (If you are, contact me; I’d love some good tips.)

We all react to curveballs differently: some with immense stress; some with a form of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and some with shutting down. Some of us deal with the issue; some of us develop anxiety to try to predict what the future might hold. 

See: Anxiety: Why Won’t It Go Away, Even Though I Know It’s Not Real?

Some people live under constant stress: food instability, housing instability, or a general fear of what may come their way.

Some of us have been through so much in life, and considering the past of victimhood, are wary of the future of their ability to deal with it.

Most of us are familiar with the victim trope: everything happens to me and I am not at fault! But most victims do not think that way, and might be encouraged to think that they do. 

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The Lie of the Victim Mentality in Trauma Victims

At this point, we’ll take an intermission, because there is a mindset in the culture out there that trauma victims are taking on this ‘victim mentality,’ the idea that they are just blaming everything on the past, and not taking responsibility for what happened.

However, being educated in trauma would have you know that trauma survivors often take too much blame for what happened, not too little.

They ruminate: what could I have done differently?

Part of security actually is acknowledging what wasn’t your fault. 

Self – blame is where we might ruminate, wondering: if I had done something different, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out this way. It’s the brain’s way of seeking to trust yourself: if I could determine what caused it, I could stop it from happening. 

But an integral part of healing from trauma is understanding that you couldn’t have done anything better – it’s not your fault the world was this way. And that’s the only way for your system to trust you. Because as long as you see it as your fault, your system will not trust that you can navigate the world – because you always could have done something better.

To heal from trauma, you have to understand that it isn’t you, wasn’t your fault, and it’s stuff in the way the world was set up – and many times there weren’t safety nets to save you from your trauma.

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Now, back to the regularly scheduled programming, the internal locus of control.

Our system often looks for someone or something to blame, because if there is someone / something to blame, our body can ensure that the threat will not happen again. 

So we’ll latch onto one thing, put our security on it, and reassure ourselves that if we could just secure this thing, I won’t be hurt again.

Say: you know it wasn’t you, but you know what was missing that could have prevented it. So we become hell – bent on achieving that thing, because if I achieve it – I can never be hurt in that way.

The logic is: if I can have this, the trauma will never happen again. 

For someone who experienced homelessness, that might be money: they may become a workaholic, out of fear of being homeless again.

For someone who was raped on a hike, they may decide never to go into nature again.

For someone whose house was broken into while they were away – they may decide never to go on vacation again.

For someone who lost a sports game and experienced intense shame from their dad – it may be becoming so good at sports, they never lose a game again.

The problem with that is, is that we place our security on something external still. It’s the job, it’s the nature avoidance, it’s the lack of vacation. 

So trauma survivors are not blaming everyone else for everything. They are actually seeking safety; they choose a path of perceived safety and sticking to it with unshakeable effort – because to their mind and body, this one thing means survival. And often they’ll work ten times harder to build an impressive life for themselves than their critics will ever work criticizing their efforts. 

But none of us can ensure nothing bad will ever happen again. None of us can ensure that the piece we latched onto for security will never be lost. 

A health emergency might empty a bank account.

A rapist can be in a grocery store parking lot.

A burglar can break in while a family is at home.

An athlete can break a leg.

(How do we make these areas safe for us again? See: Emotional Regulation)

So to review:

It wasn’t your fault.

The world can be cruel sometimes.

Blame on a specific thing and tirelessly searching to fix that / avoid it is still allowing an external anchor to control your safety.

Blaming it on a system? Blaming it on a time or place?

Choosing to avoid a specific location forever?

It’s still allowing something outside of you to determine your security; security is not from within.

(For those who grew up in unsafe homes, this is the natural path for the brain to take: it never learnt that security comes from within; it always learnt that it was determined by external forces, so when they go through a trauma, their brain just transfers the security from one place to another, instead of seeking it from within. For those without complex PTSD – trauma is agency and security robbed, so the brain’s response might be to search for it elsewhere.)

So what do we do?

This is where psychologists developed a term: internal locus of control. It is often mistakenly minimized into the idea that ‘we have agency over what happens to us’ versus ‘what happens to me is outside of my control.’ A more nuanced approach is: whatever happens to me, I will be able to deal with it. I trust myself and know that whatever takes place, I will figure out a way. I don’t know what life will bring. But I am secure in the knowledge that I have the tools to figure it out, and if I don’t, I will search for them and figure it out. (That’s also why dependence on the external – another human being taking care of the external – can also be harmful. If there is an external figure needed for your survival, your nervous system will strain to keep that connection, and soften reality to ensure that connection line remains open. Dependency for basic needs characterizes a basic reason victims often cannot leave destructive relationships.) And often, you’ve done a pretty dang good job in your past surviving until now – you’ve probably got a great track record. You may have been doing it in unhealthy ways, but your brain was surviving the way it knows how. And you may have done it in healthy ways too – or a mix. Point is, you’re here. And that probably took some effort on your part, and some pretty ingenious creativity. 

(Also, when you expend so much energy determining that something will never happen again, you use up nervous system wattage. When the nervous system is calm and not chasing something for security, it frees up more space for calmness / life.)

It’s not about knowing what will happen. It’s about knowing that when it does happen, you’ll be there to deal with it. 

To paraphrase the great Harry Potter, or rather, the great J.K Rowling: as Hagrid said, what will come will come…and he would deal with it when it did.

This blog is intended to provide general information and educational content about mental health and well-being. It is not a substitute for professional therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and reading this blog does not create a therapist-client relationship. If you have questions or concerns about your mental or physical health, please seek guidance from a qualified healthcare or mental health professional.